EVGA GTX 1060 SC is a factory-overclocked GTX 1060: the GPU is overclocked at 1607MHz (base) and 1835MHz (boost). The graphics memory is also overclocked but only a little bit: 8008MHz. The For the VGA cooler, EVGA has replaced NVIDIA reference cooler by another based on EVGA ACX cooling technology: the ACX 2.0.

2 – Gallery

Let’s start with the box and the bundle. There are always some geeky gadgets in EVGA bundles and this time, we have some stickers, a PC case badge and a big poster.

Now serious things: the graphics card. The GTX 1060 SC is equipped with the ACX 2.0 VGA cooler. The ACX 2.0 is not a new technology, it has already been used by previous GTX 980 and GTX 970 (more information can be found HERE). To enjoy the newer ACX 3.0, you have to look at the GTX 1060 SSC or FTW. The main difference between ACX 2.0 and 3.0 is the 0dB fan noise only available on ACX 3.0: below 60°C, fans are turned off leading to 0dB of noise. On the ACX 2.0, fans are always spinning, but in idle (browsing the Net for example), the cooler is quiet. Actually there is a noise but it’s barely audible.

The GTX 1060 SC comes with three DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.0b output connectors. A dual-link DVI connector is also available:

The rear side, no backplate like we can find on GTX 1080 or GTX 1070. Maybe on ACX 3.0 coolers 🙁

The GTX 1060 SC requires one additional 6-pin power connector (the TDP is less than 150W, 120W for NVIDIA reference board):

The GPU power target of the GTX 1060 SC can be set from 50% TDP to 116% TDP (see the GPU Shark screenshot in the GPU Data section). The first thing to do before the burn-in (same thing applies to overclocking) is to set the power target to the max: 116% TDP.

At idle, the total power consumption of the system was 37W and the GPU temperature was 30°C. And the noise? At idle, the EVGA GTX 1060 is quiet. Fans are not stopped but the noise is barely audible in my open case testbed.

I launched FurMark in stress test mode in 1024×768 and after 5 minutes, the GPU temperature reached 74°C while the total power consumption jumped to 200W.

A rough approximation of the GTX 1060 SC power consumption is (the power consumption of the CPU is around 20W when running FurMark): (200-37-20) * 0.9 = 128W

where 0.9 the the power efficiency factor of the Corsair AX860i PSU.

The GTX 1060 reference board has a TDP of 120W (100% TDP). Since the GTX 1060 SC is overclocked, a TDP of 128W seems correct.

At 74°C, the fan noise was really reasonable.

Important fact: there is no throttling! During the stress test, the clock speed of the GPU core was constant and equal to 1835MHz.

Here is the thermal imaging at idle:

and the the thermal imaging under full stress (FurMark):

6 – Conclusion

For around USD $260 (price on EVGA website), you get a powerful graphics card that is able to run all videogames at fullHD resolutions with max settings while keeping the power consumption to a reasonable value. The GTX 1060 is between the GTX 970 and the GTX 980 in the performance side. The card is quiet at idle while some noise is produced under load which should not be a problem in a PC case. But to be honest, a VGA cooler with 0dB fan technology (ACX 3.0) would have been perfect!

UPDATE (2016.08.25): I wasn’t aware of that, but EVGA has released a VGA bios especially to bring the 0dB fan to the GTX 1060 SC. This is very cool. You can download the VGA bios from HERE.

The bios is really simple to apply:

1/ unzip the archive:

2/ Launch update.exe:

Now the GTX 1060 SC has the 0dB fan technology and it works fine! Thanks EVGA!

And since it’s a bios update, this feature is now etched in the card 😉

The GTX 1060 comes with 6GB of GDDR5 memory which offers enough place for gaming at FHD, WGHD and even 4K resolutions. The GPU is factory overclocked (+127MHz on the boost clock).

I quickly tested the latest DOOM and, thanks to the 6GB of VRAM, the GTX 1060 SC is able to run DOOM at around 35 FPS in 4K resolution (3840×216). Not bad!

For graphics developers, this kind of card is nice because it has all latest features (OpenGL 4.5, Vulkan, D3D12), it is powerful and can be seen as a reference card (not too powerful and not too weak) for tuning graphics application workload.